At the Note 8 launch event, Samsung’s director of product marketing Jonathan Wong announced that Spotify integration is a welcome addition to Bixby. To recall, Bixby has been pretty late to the party as its English version launched in July after months of delays while its voice service has been made available just a few days back for Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8+ smartphones.

Bixby is Samsung’s answer to Amazon Alexa, Siri, and Google Assistant. The company has integrated a three-tier approach for its digital assistant – voice control, computer vision system for identifying objects through device’s camera, and on-screen “Home” menu filled with info like weather forecasts and news. Bixby is now available in more than 200 countries, which means that Samsung will get more services support onboard. With Spotify, Bixby users will be able to use voice commands to play/pause songs alongside other functions.

Yes, Bixby smart speaker is for real!

In another news, at the Galaxy Note 8 launch event, Samsung’s Mobile President, DJ Koh, confirmed that a smart speaker is in the works and should be out soon.

This is not the first time when we are hearing about the smart speaker from Samsung. A couple of months back, there were several leaks about the device, which was later reported to be shelved by Samsung. However, this is the first time when Samsung has outrightly confirmed the existence of such device and also confirmed its arrival. We are not sure if it will be Bixby speaker, but yeah, it should come integrated with Bixby to carry out the smart tasks.

Speaking to CNBC, DJ Koh confirmed the smart speaker, but he didn’t reveal the launch timeline for it. Here’s what he said:

Maybe soon we will announce it. I am already working on it. As I mentioned, I wanted to provide a fruitful user experience at home with Samsung devices, and I want to be moving quite heavily on it.

Now that Koh has spilt the beans himself, it should be noted that Samsung is going to step into a market that is pre-dominated by Google and Amazon. Apple is also going to enter the arena soon with its HomePod. It will be interesting to see how consumers react to Samsung’s iteration of smart speakers.